Tag Archives: Republican

Excellent detailed piece on Sarah Palin by journalist Michael Joseph Gross in the October 2010 issue of Vanity Fair …

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Sarah Palin: The Sound and the Fury

Former Republican Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin speaks at the "Restoring Honor" rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington on August 28, 2010.

Even as Sarah Palin’s public voice grows louder, she has become increasingly secretive, walling herself off from old friends and associates, and attempting to enforce silence from those around her. Following the former Alaska governor’s road show, the author delves into the surreal new world Palin now inhabits—a place of fear, anger, and illusion, which has swallowed up the engaging, small-town hockey mom and her family—and the sadness she has left in her wake.

Andree McLeod sits during opening arguments in an Anchorage, Alaska court room Tuesday Aug. 4, 2009, in a lawsuit brought by McLeod challenging former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's use of private e-mail accounts for official business.

It’s tough getting up to the front of the line of those wanting to call Sarah Palin for the truckload of lies spewed in Going Rogue. Even John McCain has gotten into the act by charging Palin with fabricating a $50,000 bill she claimed she got stuck with for her “vetting” and by praising the two aides targeted by Palin, Steve Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace.

Up in Alaska, the line is just as contentious. Everyone from Palin’s first years on the Wasilla City Council to her gubernatorial aides have challenged Palin’s rendition of her political career in the Last Frontier.

But perhaps the nastiest and most duplicitous passages of all in Going Rogue are those directed at Andree McLeod, the longtime Republican watchdog out of Anchorage who filed many of the Alaska Ethics Act complaints that, by Palin’s own admission, hounded her from office.

Palin’s venom directed at McLeod is both racist and viciously inaccurate. Perhaps a court will one day determine if it’s also libelous.

McLeod, now in her mid-50s and who is of Armenian descent by way of Lebanon, is referred to as the “falafel lady” repeatedly by Palin throughout her book. It’s an intended slur of ethnic derision, loaded with all of Palin’s adolescent fury. It’s also reminiscent of those members of Palin’s “Team Sarah” who referred to Barack and Michelle Obama’s Inaugural Dance as the “Watermelon Roll.” The phrase is as appalling as it is infantile.

Is Sarah Palin truly the best our country has to offer as a future world leader and president of the United States of America?

The temperature was close to zero Monday as I left the house to buy Sarah Palin‘s memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life.” The book was almost impossible to find in Anchorage before its official release Tuesday. The salesman who finally sold me one asked me to promise I wouldn’t reveal his identity if he sold me a pre-publication copy.

I made the pledge and put down my money. I’ve written about Palin since she ran for governor in 2006, interviewed her, moderated campaign debates in which she participated. I wanted to see what she’s like in prose.

In “Advertisements for Myself,” Norman Mailer admitted “a desire to inflict my casual opinions on a half-captive audience.” That’s what Palin has done in her 400-plus-page advertisement for a woman who, at age 45, seems to have permanently attached the word former to her name — former beauty queen, former mayor of Wasilla, former governor of Alaska, former Republican vice presidential nominee.

Palin is now beginning a book tour on which she will do what she does best: draw crowds, create controversy and stir up the conservative base. These things are almost certain to make her, like Mailer, a bestselling author. But they won’t make her the next president of the United States.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Palin, an amateur as a candidate, became a professional victim, blaming others when encountering political turbulence.

U.S. Rep. Bill Owens (D-NY) (L) poses for photographers with Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) (R) as (2nd L to 5th L) Owens' granddaughter Caroline Antonipillai, wife Jane, son Brendan and daughter Jenna look on during a mock swearing in November 6, 2009 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Owens won the special election for seat that was vacated by John McHugh.

ALBANY – Despite the national attention lavished on New York’s 23rd Congressional District, Democrats won a surprise victory because of local concerns over jobs, the trashing of an assemblywoman by outsiders and Republican feuding, experts said.

Democrat Bill Owens wooed voters with talk of dairy farms and small businesses, the analysts noted, while Conservative Doug Hoffman touted endorsements from right-wing media personalities such as Fox’s Glenn Beck and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Others suggested Hoffman’s vague positions on improvements to the St. Lawrence Seaway, Fort Drum Army base and other regional assets also hurt him.

Analysts said the state Conservative Party’s influence over the GOP’s future direction would be diminished because while Hoffman drove moderate Republican Assemb. Dierdre Scozzafava from the field, he couldn’t clinch the House seat.

The Daily Beast has obtained the speeches Sarah Palin planned to deliver on Election Night 2008—win or lose. Read the words the McCain camp didn’t want her to say.

"Sarah from Alaska: The Sudden Rise and Brutal Education of a New Conservative Superstar."

One year ago Wednesday, the McCain/Palin ticket suffered a resounding electoral defeat. But for Sarah Palin, it was still only the beginning of her reign as the most talked about Republican in America—a title she can rightfully claim to this day, as her very name continues to elicit emotions ranging from abhorrence to adoration.

In Sarah from Alaska we uncover new stories and insights into Palin’s ascent from Wasilla to the governor’s mansion and bring to light how her unhappy return to Alaska led to her abrupt resignation in July. In addition, we go behind the scenes of Palin’s 2008 vice presidential run, where we illustrate how internal tensions led to an all-out civil war on election night in Phoenix. We reveal the minute by minute details of how Palin turned her back on top campaign staffers and fought behind the scenes to deliver a concession speech that had been written for her in advance. John McCain and his senior aides blocked her from doing so, leading to a dramatic showdown between the candidates and their staffs that has remained untold until now.

Former Gov. Sarah Palin is in the middle of yet another dispute within the Republican party.

When Steve Schmidt, campaign manager for Sen. John McCain‘s (Ariz.) presidential bid, said late last week that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as the Republican presidential nominee in 2012 would be “catastrophic” for the party, he set off another in a series of skirmishes between the pro and anti-Palin camps within the GOP.

On the anti-Palin side came a tweet from Mike Murphy, a Republican media consultant and a past adviser to McCain. “Steve Schmidt correct about Sarah Palin and ’12,” wrote Murphy. “Shame he didn’t feel same way a year ago when he was lobbying McCain to choose her as VP.”

And on Monday, John Weaver, McCain’s closest political adviser for much of the past decade, said that he was nearly certain that the former governor would never be the Republican nominee and added that, if she was, “it would surely mean a political apocalypse is upon us.”

Mike Murphy is a Republican political consultant who has advised such nationally prominent Republicans as John McCain, Jeb Bush, John Engler, Tommy Thompson, Spencer Abraham, Christie Whitman, Lamar Alexander, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Republican strategist Mike Murphy has never been a timid talker, and he unloaded on Sarah Palin during NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.

Addressing the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee’s chances of getting her party’s nod in 2012, he acknowledged that she has a constituency. But he said, “She’ll never be the nominee. It would be actually a disaster if she was the nominee.”

He joined conservative columnist David Brooks in trashing talk show hosts such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and their efforts to steer the GOP’s direction. “The noisiest parts of the conservative media machine have far less influence than the mainstream media machine that covers the Republican world thinks they do,” Murphy said. “These radio guys can’t deliver a pizza, let alone a nomination,” he added.